Interior Ecologies
From simple greenhouses to botanic facilities, and from data centers to automated interiors, never before in history has architecture produced so many interiors for the non-human, challenging disciplinary notions on tectonics, light, comfort and entire regulatory frameworks. Once designed for and with the human, contemporary interiors have instead become exponentially complex materializations where the politics of our present moment are played out. Ultimately, who are they for?
Interior Ecologies is a critical framework developed within the Master of Arts in Interior Architecture (MAIA) program at Geneva School of Art and Design (HEAD – Genève). It examines how interior architecture engages with climate change, resource circulation and multispecies coexistence alongside posthuman and more-than-human design perspectives. Rather than treating interiors as autonomous spaces, it calls on us to rethink them as complex ecologies in which human and nonhuman actors are entangled across broader planetary scales.
This roundtable brings together voices from HEAD – Genève, MoMA, and Columbia GSAPP to reflect on how interior architecture can contribute to new ecological approaches to design, research, and professional practice.
The event will also include a presentation of the scenographic installation developed by MAIA for Assembly, the Swiss presence at Climate Week NYC. Employing scaffolding and dismantlable systems as an embodiment of circular architecture, the installation demonstrates principles of reuse, adaptability, and reversibility, staking its claim as an active ecological agent within the space.
More information, speakers, and event program
This event is part of Assembly, the main Swiss stage at Climate Week NYC 2026. As world leaders gather in Midtown Manhattan, Swissnex assembles Swiss and global voices – from private sector innovators and researchers to artists and policymakers – in the East Village for three days of communal climate thinking and action. Assembly speaks to deliberation and democracy – the idea that communities must collectively define their futures – as well as the ongoing, creative, improvisational process of constructing those futures from the pieces of our present.